One of the ways we invest in our future lawyers is through our award-winning LIFT programme, the first internship programme of its kind.

We have partnered with a select number of organisations and core Clifford Chance business teams, to offer paid summer internships to our future trainees, with the sole aim of supporting your professional development.

In the time between accepting your offer and starting your Training Contract, you'll have the opportunity to develop useful non-legal skills such as marketing, product management and business operations which will help you to excel as a trainee.

We recognise that being a good lawyer takes more than knowing the law – it's about understanding our industry, how businesses are run, and how best to service clients – and the best way to develop this understanding is through hands-on work experience.

Designed to create more, business-minded, creative and agile trainees by providing work experience placements prior to starting the Training Contract, this is the future of work experience.

This is another way in which we prepare you to be able to hit the ground running when you start with us.

"During my internship with Spark21, I was responsible for setting up a variety of initiatives, as well as working alongside and supporting my supervisor with existing projects.

Examples of these include taking responsibility for expanding the Inspirational Women in Law Awards categories, as well as setting up both a Student Ambassador Programme and the Legal Gen Z project; a project that will interview 16–25-year-olds to understand the impact of the pandemic on their legal careers and aspirations.

Further, I expanded the charity’s social media presence. I firstly achieved this through a LinkedIn and Instagram giveaway, and secondly by creating and circulating promotional materials for the charity’s book launch of ‘In Her Words’, through technology such as MailChimp and across social media platforms.

I also observed how to successfully secure corporate sponsorship for new projects, before researching and compiling longlists of inspirational women to be involved in such projects.

Building professional relationships with the Spark21 team has been the most valuable part of my LIFT internship. Gaining first-hand exposure of how working within a supportive team yields a collaborative work environment, which translates to more efficient outcomes, has been fantastic. 

Such exposure will be a valuable contribution to my Training Contract, developing my ability to solve problems creatively, put clients first, and build lasting professional relationships. Particularly, learning to build rapports with clients in order to identify their needs, and provide efficient solutions to meet those needs."

"I’m incredibly lucky to have been given a huge range of tasks and responsibility during my LIFT internship. I’ve done everything from interviewing and onboarding potential tutors and drafting tutors’ contracts to going to meetings with Peppo’s business consultant, accountants, and a film editor.

The internship has really exposed me to all elements of the business. I’ve learnt how the organisation operates at the highest level, and how and why crucial business decisions are made.

Gaining this deep understanding has been invaluable as it has taught me to consider decisions and issues from a client’s perspective, and to think outside the box, skills that will be vital during my Training Contract.

Having this client exposure has not only increased my confidence in engaging and communicating with people from a whole host of backgrounds, but it has also driven home to me the importance of relationship building.

I’ve also gained a large range of transferrable skills during my LIFT internship, most notably project management, legal drafting and research skills. These will evidently be highly applicable during my Training Contract, allowing me to hit the ground running, with the self-confidence that I can perform the role successfully."

"Eleanor has fantastic technology skills. She identified that we could streamline our processes by converting standard communications into templates. Eleanor therefore prepared the template document and ensured that we could cut and paste templates straight into e-mails. This is going to be a very helpful resource going forward. Eleanor is very keen to join Clifford Chance and I am so excited for her.  I have supervised many trainees over the years and I have absolutely no doubt that she will make a first rate trainee and lawyer. She is organised, intelligent, committed and a real pleasure to work with."  Peppo Tutors 

"The best part of working as an intern at a start-up like Neota, is that your role is never restricted to doing just one thing. Instead, during my time I gained exposure to multiple areas of the business.

I worked with the marketing team on the development of Neota’s online Community, I worked with the sales team on developing demos to pitch to prospective clients and I worked with the developers on the development of Neota’s products.

These experiences along with the relationships I formed taught me a lot, not just about legal tech, but also about law firms and the legal profession as a whole. From a legal tech perspective, Neota’s no-code platform was the perfect entry point to develop my technical abilities and apply them to build solutions of value to law firms looking to improve their service delivery processes. 

Being given the opportunity to see law firms from an angle of a legal tech start-up allowed me to learn more about the challenges facing legal services and where the future of the legal industry is going.

My experience at Neota has taught me how to cultivate and apply a creative and innovative mindset into a risk-averse legal industry.

The internship has given me invaluable insight in to how our clients work, what their needs are and the true nature of the relationship between law firm and client. The experience has contributed immensely to my professional development. 

During my Training Contract, I plan on using what I’ve learnt to not only help optimise Clifford Chance’s use of legal technology but also provide added-value to our clients."